By Katharina Schlichtherle
On the evening of May 31, 1862, the men of the 4th North Carolina State Troops who remained standing, after their baptism of fire in the battle of Seven Pines in Virginia, were exhausted, stunned and reeling from the staggering losses the regiment had sustained over a brief few hours taking Casey’s Redoubt, a stronghold central to the Union line. Of the 678 men the unit had carried into action that day, 324 lay dead, dying or wounded, on the field or in one of the many hospitals in nearby Richmond. For 77, attempts at saving them came too late: they had been killed on the field in the murderous enfilading fire as they advanced on the redoubt.
One of the shaken survivors was Ordnance Sgt. William Sharpe Barnes of Company F, who had turned 19 in April. It was now his painful responsibility to write home to his mother and four younger siblings on the family farm in Saratoga, Wilson County, N.C., of the dreadful news that his older brother, Jesse, was among the dead. Jesse Sharpe Barnes, a 23-year-old lawyer, had been the captain of Company F, and had died leading his men up to the breastworks of the redoubt.
The Battle of Seven Pines, part of the Peninsula Campaign, marked the end of Union offensive operations launched two months earlier by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Though the casualties were the highest of any engagement in the East up to this time in the war, the number was relatively small compared to the bloodletting that was to come. Losses on a scale unheard of—numbers previously unimaginable—would soon obliterate the death of one young man from rural eastern North Carolina.
But for the Barnes family, the news came as another heavy blow. Mahala Sharpe Barnes, a widowed mother of 10 children, had lost three offspring in 18 months. In addition to Jesse, her 26-year-old son, John, a private in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, died of disease in a Kentucky camp. She also suffered the death of a daughter. Only seven siblings now remained, with William and the oldest son, Benjamin, serving in the army. Another brother, Joshua, would be conscripted in 1864, after he turned 17. Fortunately for the family, these three brothers survived the war.
Born on June 18, 1838, Jesse Sharpe Barnes was the fourth child of affluent farmer Elias Barnes and his wife, Mahala. This particular Barnes family was a branch of one of the more influential families in the Stantonsburg/Wilson area, then part of Edgecombe County, N.C. One of Elias’ brothers, Joshua Barnes, was a militia brigadier who, in 1849, was involved in incorporating the town of Wilson, and, in 1855, a county by the same name. A prominent supporter of local education, he was instrumental in incorporating the Toisnot Male Academy and the Wilson Female Seminary. Education was important to Elias as well, who served as a trustee for the Hopewell Academy. Another brother, William Barnes, was a successful lawyer and planter. All three brothers were among the area’s larger slaveholders, with Elias Barnes holding title to 56 slaves in 1850. According to Elias’ will, the family farm was roughly 500 acres in area. The number of slaves and amount of land owned by the Barnes family put them in the top 3 percent of all North Carolina households—one of the state’s elite clans.
“Civil discord—the blighting breath of Fanaticism, and the dreadful spirit of Sectionalism, have all striven to drag down this mighty temple of Liberty.”
In this affluent and privileged setting, Jesse and his nine siblings, all born between 1831 and 1855, grew up. And, their expectations of life were surely formed by it. All the Barnes children, during and after the Civil War, received the best education available at the local level. Benjamin went on to complete his education at the University of North Carolina, where he enrolled in 1852. Two years later, Jesse, now 16, followed his brother to Chapel Hill. The family could well afford this prestigious option, rather than sending the brothers to a less costly sectarian college. At the time, state universities were seen as providing the education needed to take leadership roles in society, and possibly paving the way to fame and fortune. The University of North Carolina, like other institutions of higher education, attracted wealthy sons of the Southern gentry.
Both Barnes brothers were active in the Philanthropic Society, and numbered among the better students in their classes. Jesse was serious about his studies, especially his oratory skills. At the end of his first year, he was one of a select group of freshmen invited to participate at the declamation during the commencement ceremonies. Jesse participated again in his sophomore year, though his educational accomplishments began to drop off. The decline coincided with the sudden death of his father, who was fatally struck by lightning on June 6, 1856. Jesse however, did graduate on track in 1858, and became an attorney, specializing in property and equity law in Wilson.